10/31/2006

Tony Snow says that Dick Cheney wasn’t endorsing waterboarding when an interviewer asked: “Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no brainer if it can save lives?” and Cheney replied: “It’s a no brainer for me.”

What? It sounds like a “no-brainer” that he was endorsing waterboarding.

This is Jay, checking in on Patterico’s dear friends for yet another technical update.

Last time I left a post on here I was explaining the issues with false positives from some users being marked as spam by Spam Karma 2, which was the anti-spam security measure I implemented after Bad Behavior started showing more holes than Gorgonzola. One measure that SK2 used—commenter granularity—could not be reconciled with the large number of existing comments on a site like this. It caused a large grievance among those whose comments would post successfully, only to be retro-spanked by SK2 after a little bit more server-side, invisible processing. Turning off that feature on SK2, however, left this blog open to far more undesirable comments from even further undesirable people’s undesirable, destructive creations. Yes, the darned spam bots were allowed in here far too many times touting the benefits of larger breasts.

Hopefully, the false positives will stop after a while and the plastic-surgery–related comments would finally be staved off with the implementation of Akismet, Matt Mullenweg‘s anti-spam baby. This comes with no promises of course, but I hope that results would be tangible over the next 24 hours, that way I can do something about it if this still doesn’t work.

Take note, however, that no anti-spam measure truly is foolproof. Any spammer can set up all sorts of virtual hosts to produce trackback spam that resolve to a junk site full of links to those foolish enough to pay for them… Oh, but I ramble too much. Basically I hope that this works better for Patterico and all y’all, ‘coz this is almost a last resort short of requiring registration—more painless than you might think—for anyone who wants to leave a comment.

Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

Doughy stuffed suit John McCain, a Republican hack who has never worn the uniform of our country, had this sharp response:

“Senator Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country’s call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education,” Mr. McCain said.

Mr. McCain said any suggestion that only the poorly educated would agree to serve in Iraq is “an insult to every soldier serving in combat.”

In response to Kerry’s defense, that he was criticizing Bush and not the troops, McCain said this:

You can’t make this up. His statement, basically, was so demeaning to the men and women who are serving in the military that you will be even more grateful than you are at this moment that George Bush is president of the United States…

You can’t make this up. His statement was that if you get an education and you do well, then you don’t have to go to Iraq, and if you don’t have an education, then you have to go to Iraq. Do you know how demeaning that is to the men and women who are serving so magnificently in the cause of freedom and are fighting and dying in Iraq today? As I said, you can’t make it up.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for context for Kerry’s remarks. Let me know if you find a transcript or more video or audio.

Clint Taylor has an excellent essay on world leaders’ dabbling in fortune telling and the occult, here.

He subtly alludes to such activities by Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton:

While getting national policy advice from the occult sounds weird, it is, sad to say, not exactly unusual. And the dabblings of a couple of American first ladies notwithstanding, it is usually the province of the most evil and repressive dictatorships in the world.

That’s a good excuse for linking Harry Shearer’s Le Show skit in which Hillary talks to Eleanor Roosevelt. (Fair warning: I searched for it on Harry’s site because I had heard the original on the radio. But I can’t get the above file to play. Hopefully you will have better luck.)

10/30/2006

Senator John Kerry made this eyebrow-raising statement while giving a speech to a group of students at Pasadena City College. [Listen to the actual MP3 audio and decide how to interpret it for yourself.]

So the question is: Do you wish to continue to see such works? Or do you want to reform intellectual property laws? (If you think that there is somehow a third alternative that I am not considering, please let me know).

Two interesting items regarding the military and blogs caught my eye this morning.

First, Cassandra at Villainous Company is seeking donations for the Marine team in “Project Valour IT,” which she describes as “grateful Americans, providing laptops with voice-activated software for severely wounded troops.” Here is the beginning of the story behind the project:

Project Valour-IT began when Captain Charles “Chuck” Ziegenfuss was wounded by an IED while serving as commander of a tank company in Iraq in June 2005.

During his deployment he kept a blog. Captivating writing, insightful stories of his experiences, and his self-deprecating humor won him many loyal readers. After he was wounded, his wife continued his blog, keeping his readers informed of his condition.

As he began to recover, CPT Ziegenfuss wanted to return to writing his blog, but serious hand injuries hampered his typing.

How he solved that problem, and how that led to this project, is all at Cassandra’s post here. Go there and donate.

Also, the Washington Post yesterday had an article about military oversight over blogs by soldiers:

From the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan to here at home, soldiers blogging about military life are under the watchful eye of some of their own.

A Virginia-based operation, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, monitors official and unofficial blogs and other Web sites for anything that may compromise security. The team scans for official documents, personal contact information and pictures of weapons or entrances to camps.

This appears to be a necessary operation, and certainly soldiers’ speech rights are severely circumscribed for valid and necessary reasons. However, in any such operation, there is a natural tendency to shut down legitimate commentary on the grounds that it could make the organization look bad. I hope that the Army does not go overboard with this oversight, and I hope it will allow truthful commentary by soldiers who respect operational security and give an accurate picture of life on the front lines.

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